Thursday, February 17, 2005

Back Off Before I Tazer Your Ass, Sasquatch

The Starbucks nearest Evans World Headquarters has a drive-thru window, which is ideal for mornings like today, when my son was up at the buttcrack of dawn, climbing into our bed and wanting to cuddle and chat and bond. Because I am the model parent, I acquiesced despite the fact that my son had roused me from a dream where I was flying naked over Nazi Germany, taunting all of Hitler’s pointy-helmeted goons and telling them to suck my schmeckel. “Screw Adolph,” I yelled. Heil this, motherfuckers!”

Awake and grounded, I buckled my son into his car seat and steered our pimped-out Mazda minivan (the one with the CD player that doesn’t work because my daughter shoved about four bucks in loose change into it) over to the Starbucks drive-thru. A friendly female voice welcomed me through the speaker and took our usual order: an iced venti soy latte, a chocolate milk and two cinnamon twists. And then we “pulled around.”

Here’s where the story gets a little hairy.

I hold out a $10 bill to pay for our very healthy breakfast and out of the window comes the right front paw of a yeti.

I scream. “Aaaaah!”

My son shrieks. “Eeeeeh!”

The yeti groans. “Grrronnng!”

My first instinct is to fish around in the glove compartment for my wife’s pepper spray. I’ll douse the beast, render it powerless, hog-tie it and drag it down to the police station in exchange for a handsome reward of canned welfare turkey and supermarket scrip.

But as I leaf through the maps and pens and tampons in the glove compartment, the yeti speaks to me. In English.

“Sir,” it says, “here’s your coffee.”

I snap my head in Sasquatch’s direction. IT’S A WOMAN! A HUMAN WOMAN! RUN, WOMAN, RUN! RUN BEFORE THE YETI EATS YOUR GUTS!

I look at her outstretched hand -- the hand holding the coffee that I need to survive -- and I notice that the yeti’s arm is attached to the woman’s body. I inspect further and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a yeti paw at all. It was a woman’s arm --- an arm covered with more human hair than the heads of Crystal Gayle, Cher, Rapunzel and that weirdo lead singer from Creed combined.

I’m mortified. How do you apologize to someone for thinking they were Big Foot and being so petrified by their mutant limbs that you were three seconds away from pepper spraying them like you would a belligerent, piss-soaked drunkard who takes a swing at a cop? I try to summon the right words but my thought process is interrupted by the kid in the choo-choo train pajamas in the back seat.

“Daddy,” he says, “why does that woman have arms like a bear?”

“Not a bear, buddy. A yeti.”

“What’s a yeti?”

“A yeti is a big, hairy, human-like animal that lives in the Himalayas and eats little children who don’t flush after they go potty.”

“Oh. We don’t like yetis do we, daddy?”

“No, buddy. We don’t. And that’s why you have to remember to flush.”

When we return home from Starbucks, Hot Wife is awake. She confronts me in the bathroom. Seeing yet another cup of coffee, she wonders if perhaps I’m spending a little too much money at Starbucks. I tell her that with a few more visits during the yeti’s shift, our son just might be scared into painting the house, cooking us dinner every night and rotating the tires on the minivan.

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Other Humans Write

Here are actual questions you asked the presidential candidates when they appeared on your show. To Bush: 'Were y'all spankers?" To Kerry: "Did you ever spank the girls?" To Bush: "Did you spank them?" To Kerry: "What did she do to get spanked?" Hey, Dr. Phil, keep it in your pleated pants. [GQ Magazine, Dec. 2004, pg. 372]